CrossFit – Day 1
Wednesday, 12 September 2012 
10 Comments
As you can probably tell from the change of my post subjects in the last 12 months from mostly parenting stuff to mostly health and fitness stuff – I’m having a midlife crisis.
It’s the good kind of midlife crisis though :), the kind that urges me to make positive changes in my life and not just trivial ones like buying more clothes or getting botoxed. (but now that I’ve typed the word ‘shopping’ it’s occurred to me that somehow I have nothing to wear anymore and should probably go shopping as well…)
But anyhow… I guess the ‘crisis’ started when I started running 3 years ago. Running encouraged me to limit my intake of gluten and ditch sugar, and the longer I’ve been eating this way, the more I’m seeing how it’s not only good for my body but also for my mind. Being someone who’s just come off Citalopram (almost 5 months ago), it’s very important for me to know how to maintain my sanity with natural methods after the course of meds has finished. (I will write in more detail about how sugar affects my mood at some other time, it’s a hugely complicated topic and I want to let it simmer in my head for a little bit longer.)
My midlife crisis got revved up a step last year when MrB’s dad passed away from pancreatic cancer. Before that I didn’t know much about the pancreas, in fact I didn’t know much at all about how exactly do our organs function and what they need in order to function well. So I started reading, found some great blogs to follow, like the Wellness Warrior and the Wellness Mama , and my knowledge on this topic has greatly improved.
So… after a few years of running and eating better than before, I now have a very new project in my midlife crisis – it involves paying some attention to my upper body for a change. My legs are strong from running, but my upper body is unfortunately weak like an overcooked noodle. I do do a bit of strength training at home, but I have been feeling that it’s not enough – I can still only do 10 push ups :)
Enter CrossFit – a gym without treadmills, stair masters or weight machines. instead it’s one with kettle bells, medicine balls and gymnastics hoops. From what I’ve understood and seen so far, it’s a program kind of like bootcamp, you do one type of exercise for a certain amount of minutes, run in between and the move onto another exercise, most of them involving strength training combined with cardio (see the YouTube video below).
Yesterday morning at 7am I had my first one-on-one ‘foundations’ session (three of those are required to be able to join a class). I did push ups, pull ups on an incline with feet on the ground, and squats and burpees (who knows what these are? ;). At the end when I was timed I felt like a contestant on the Biggest Looser – I made so many faces it’s not funny. And when I got to the office showers afterwards, I could not lift up my arms to wash my hair. THAT’s how good the session was!
Today I’m hurting, from my shoulders down to my bum. Tomorrow I will probably be hurting some more. And on Friday I’ll do it all over again.
Crazy, huh? :) It’s just that I know that for my body to work well, I need to challenge it and push it beyond the comfort zone… I know that I will become a better runner too if my core and glutes are stronger. And – I do not want to wake up in another 30 years and be faced with the kinds of diagnoses that my older relatives are facing at the moment: diabetes, high cholesterol being the least worrying ones…
Healthy body = healthy mind = happy life.
There is no other way for me.
I hope that CrossFit will become as addictive and as much fun as running is for me.
Love it! I’ve always been quite active but when I got preggers with my first one I really let go and gained about 70 pounds and I felt awful after giving birth. My husband and I started doing P90X workout videos which is similar to crossfit. I lost the weight and then we got into triathlons. Right now preg with second and still spinning and swimming. Definetly cutting the sugar and lowering the gluten has made a huge difference. Right on sistah!
I think I’ve heard of P90X, I’ll look it up again to refresh my memory.
YAAAAY!!! You go girl!
(oh and I know what are burpees etc ;) And love them!)
How is it possible to love burpees???
How is your mum doing? I assume not quite ready for CrossFit sessions yet :)
She’s doing much better, but definitely not ready for CrossFit yet!
OMG! You are just too healthy for me. I haven’t tried this just yet. I am doing a bit of running and Bikram. That’s all. Where did I get wrong?
You have not gone wrong anywhere, totally the opposite – you have found something that YOU enjoy! :)
I’ve been hearing quite a bit about crossfit recently. I definitely agree with Healthy body = healthy mind = happy life.
Looking into the health issues in my family, I think diet and exercise can make a huge difference.
I think the ideas behind CrossFit are sort of the same as behind the 30-day Shred and perhaps other DVDs people can do at home – cardio+weights at high intensity. It’s certaily more fun (i.e. challenging) than stomping away on a stairmaster for hours at a time :)